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A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN Ben Segal / CERN IT-PDP-TE April, 1995 Now that the Internet has exploded in popularity on a world wide scale,with a major component of its success (the World WideWeb) being developed at CERN, itseems a good time to look back and trace the history of the Internet atCERN. Even before the Web allowed Internet penetration in the mostunexpected places, the presence of the Internet protocols at CERN hadalready encouraged their adoption not only in many other parts of Europebut also in such influential organizations as the ITU and ISO in Geneva.Another reason for writing this history today is that it is almostexactly ten years ago that CERN named me as its first "TCP/IPCoordinator". The TCP/IP protocols (as Internet protocols were thencalled) had actually entered CERN a few years earlier, inside a BerkeleyUnix system, but not too many people were aware of that event. In thecomputer networking arena, a period of 10-15 years represents severalgenerations of technology evolution. Readers of this history will perhapsbe surprised that in a period of only three years there can bedevelopments that radically change the whole way that people think aboutcomputer communications. This has just happened with the Web (prototypedin 1990-1, fully accepted over 1993-4), but several related steps neededto take place beforehand to enable the Web's emergence. First of all,standards had to emerge in computer systems themselves, and in programmingtechniques. Next, standards were needed in network and computer hardware,with the accompanying price reductions. Finally there had to be a changein mentality, among both manufacturers and computer users, for them firstto allow and then to insist that their systems should be able tocommunicate freely. Another interesting element, apart from therapidity of change, is the factor of accident or coincidence, oftentraceable to a personal event or a meeting of one or two people incritical circumstances. Bringing the Internet to CERN was not a simplebusiness, although similar events probably occurred at other pioneersites. Being very well acquainted with the people involved, the presentauthor was ideally placed to observe the interplay of technical, personaland political elements at CERN that helped bring about a major part oftoday's Information Revolution.In the Beginning - the 1970's In the beginning was - chaos. In the same way that the theory of highenergy physics interactions was itself in a chaotic state up until theearly 1970's, so was the so-called area of "Data Communications"at CERN. The variety of different techniques, media and protocols usedwas staggering; open warfare existed between many manufacturers'proprietary systems, various home-made systems (including CERN's own"FOCUS" and "CERNET"), and the then rudimentaryefforts at defining open or international standards. There were nogeneral purpose Local Area Networks (LANs): each application used its ownapproach. The only really widespread CERN network at that time was"INDEX": a serial twisted pair system with a central Gandalfcircuit switch, connecting some hundreds of "dumb" terminals viaRS232 to a selection of accessible computer ports for interactive login.CERNET, beginning in 1976, offered a fast file transfer service betweena number of mainframes and minicomputers via 2Mbit/s serial lines usingpacket switching in a network of gateway nodes. Remote login (known as"virtual terminal service") was only supported to a singlesystem, the central IBM mainframe. At the end of its ten year life CERNETsupported 100 systems, including its own version of a LAN bridge,connecting some of CERN's first Ethernets. However, even thougharchitecturally CERNET resembled ARPAnet, all its protocols had beendeveloped independently. It was therefore doomed, though this was ofcourse unknown at the beginning. Even if its designers had been incontact with Vint Cerf and company, there was no efficient way to run atransatlantic collaboration. Imagine a period without electronic mail...but no, this was only introduced at CERN to any extent at the beginning ofthe 1980's. This was also a period without standards for computersystems themselves, not just communication systems. There are thereforefew computer files from this period and we must rely on the writtenrecord. We must look back into our paper files, typed by our typists,back into a time when there were no PC's, no Macintoshes, no Unix and no Cprogramming at CERN...The Stage is Set - early 1980's To my knowledge, the first time any "Internet Protocol" wasused at CERN was during the second phase of the STELLA SatelliteCommunication Project, from 1981-83, when a satellite channel was used tolink remote segments of two early local area networks (namely"CERNET", running between CERN and Pisa, and a Cambridge Ringnetwork running between CERN and Rutherford Laboratory). This wascertainly inspired by the ARPA IP model, known to the Italian members ofthe STELLA collaboration (CNUCE, Pisa) who had ARPA connections;nevertheless the STELLA internet protocol was independently implementedand a STELLA-specific higher-level protocol was deployed on top of it, notTCP. As the senior technical member of the CERN STELLA team, thisdevelopment opened my eyes to the meaning and potential of an Internetnetwork protocol. Ethernet made its appearance at CERN at about thattime (1983), when an initial stretch of the soon-to-be-famous yellow cablearrived to support a demonstration of the very advanced Symbolics machinefrom MIT, which actually ran ChaosNet, XNS and TCP/IP protocols if Iremember correctly. Before that, starting in 1982, we had installed someApollo Domain coaxial cables for a 12 Mbit/s token ring network runningApollo's proprietary protocol, the first to offer a real distributed filesystem as well as network virtual memory paged over the ring. TheApollo workstations brought CERN firmly into the distributed computingbusiness. They had no equal for large scientific and graphicsapplications. The fact that the system was proprietary seemed unimportantat that time: Unix based competitors like Sun and HP were outclassed, andUnix itself had little appeal for CERN physicists. A file-exchangegateway was made (by this author) between the Apollos and the home-grownCERNET network, sufficient to exchange data and program files with thecentral CERN mainframes and other CERNET hosts. Remote login was made, ifdesired, by terminal emulation via RS232 cables; other connections wereimprovised by other techniques, in the disjoint spirit of those times.In 1983, for the first time, a Data Communications (DC) Group was setup in the CERN computing division (then "Data-handling Division" or "DD")under David Lord. Before that time, work on computer networking in DD hadbeen carried out in several groups: I myself belonged to the Software(SW) Group, which had assigned me and several others to participate inDD's networking projects since 1970. All my work on STELLA had beensponsored in this way, for example. The new DC Group seemed to have amandate to unify networking practices across the whole of CERN, but aftera short time it became clear that this was not going to be donecomprehensively. DC Group decided to leave major parts of the field toothers while it concentrated on building a CERN-wide backboneinfrastructure. Furthermore, following the political currents of thetime, they laid a very formal stress on ISO standard networking, the onlymajor exception being their support for DECnet. PC networking was ignoredalmost entirely; IBM mainframe networking (except for BITNET/EARN) as wellas the developing fields of Unix and workstation-based networking allremained in SW Group. So did the pioneering work on electronic mail andnews under Dietrich Wiegandt, which made CERN a European leader in thisfield. (From the early 1980's until about 1990 CERN acted as the Swissbackbone for USENET news and gatewayed all Swiss e-mail between the EUnetuucp network, BITNET, DECnet and the Internet). As these were preciselythe areas in which the Internet protocols were to emerge, this choice ledto a situation in which CERN's support for them would be marginal orambiguous for several years to come. It was from around 1984 that thewind began to change.TCP/IP Introduced at CERN In August, 1984 I wrote a proposal to the SW Group Leader, Les Robertson,for the establishment of a pilot project to install and evaluate TCP/IPprotocols on some key non-Unix machines at CERN including the centralIBM-VM mainframe and a VAX VMS system. This was to decide if TCP/IP couldindeed solve the problem of heterogeneous connectivity between the neweropen systems and the established proprietary ones. It also proposed toevaluate Xerox's XNS protocols as a possible alternative. The proposalwas approved and the work led to acceptance of TCP/IP as the mostpromising solution, together with the use of "sockets"(pioneered by the BSD 4.x Unix system) as the recommended API. In early1985 I was appointed the "TCP/IP Coordinator" for CERN, as partof a formal agreement between SW Group (under Les Robertson) and DC Group(under its new leader, Brian Carpenter). Incorporating the latter'spolicy line, this document specifically restricted the scope of Internetprotocols for use only within the CERN site. Under no circumstances wereany external connections to be made using TCP/IP: here the ISO/DECnetmonopoly still ruled supreme, and would do so until 1989. Between 1985and 1988, the coordinated introduction of TCP/IP within CERN madeexcellent progress, in spite of the small number of individuals involved.This was because the technologies concerned were basically simple andbecame steadily easier to buy and install. A major step was taken inNovember 1985 when the credibility of the Internet protocols asimplemented within CERN was sufficient to convince the management of theLEP/SPS controls group that the LEP control system, crucial for theoperation of CERN's 27 km accelerator LEP then under construction, shoulduse TCP/IP. This decision, made by P-G. Innocenti, Jacques Altaber andPal Anderssen, combined with a later decision to use Unix-based systems,turned out to be essential for the success of LEP. The TCP/IP activity inLEP/SPS included a close collaboration with IBM's Yorktown Laboratory tosupport IP protocols on the IBM token ring network that had been chosenfor the LEP control system.Other main areas of progress were: a steady improvement of the TCP/IPinstallations on IBM-VM/CMS, from the first University of Wisconsinversion (WISCNET) to the fully-supported IBM version that still runstoday; the rapid spread of TCP/IP on VMS systems, using third-partysoftware in the absence of any DEC product; the first support of IBM PCnetworking, starting with MIT's free TCP/IP software and migrating to itscommercial descendant from FTP Software. This latterwork, by Mike Gerard and Brian Henningsen (who would later move to ISO inGeneva), led directly to the very comprehensive support of PC andMacintosh networking that exists today at CERN using TCP/IP, Novell andApple protocols. All this was accompanied by a rapid change from RS232based terminal connections to the use of terminal servers and virtualEthernet ports using TCP/IP or DEC-based protocols. This permitted eitherdumb terminals or workstation windows to be used for remote loginsessions, and hence to today's X-Windows. In particular, starting from3270 emulator software received from the University of Wisconsin anddeveloped by myself for Apollo and Unix systems, a full-screen remotelogin facility was provided to the VM/CMS service; this software was thenfurther developed by Mike Gerard and used as the basis for the TerminalAccess Gateway service (TAG) which became a standard way for CERN users toaccess VM/CMS systems world-wide. As late as September 1987, DD'sDivision Leader P. Zanella would still write officially to a perplexeduser, with a copy to the then Director of Research, J. Thresher:"The TCP-IP networking is not a supported service." Thisillustrates the ambiguity of the situation (already referred to above) asthese words were written at essentially the same time as another majorstep forward was made in the use of Unix and TCP/IP at CERN: the choice touse them for the new Cray XMP machine instead of Cray's well-establishedproprietary operating system COS and its associated Cray networkingprotocols. Suddenly, instead of asking "What use is Unix on amainframe?" some users began to ask "Why not use Unix oneverything?". The Cray represented CERN's first"supercomputer" according to US military and commercialstandards and a serious security system was erected around it. As part ofthis system, in 1987 I purchased the first two Cisco IP routers inSwitzerland (perhaps in Europe?), to act as IP filters between CERN'spublic Ethernet and a new secure IP segment for the Cray. I had met thefounder of "cisco systems", Len Bosack, ata Usenix exhibition in the USA in June 1987and been very impressed with his router and thisfiltering feature. Cisco was a tiny company with about 20 employees atthat time, and doing business with them was very informal. It was hard toforesee the extent to which they would come to dominate the router market,and the growth that the market would undergo. Unfortunately I did notpurchase any Cisco shares when a little later they went public...Birth of the European Internet In November 1987 I received a visit from Daniel Karrenberg, the system manager of "mcvax", a celebrated machine at the Amsterdam Mathematics Centre that acted as the gateway for all transatlantic traffic between the US and European sides of the world-wide "USENET", the Unix users' network that carried most of the email and news of that time using a primitive protocol called "uucp". Daniel had hit on the idea of converting the European side ("EUnet") into an IP network, just as major parts of the US side of USENET were doing at that time. The news and mail would be redirected to run over TCP/IP (using the SMTP protocol), unnoticed by the users, but all the other Internet utilities "telnet", "ftp", etc. would become available as well, once Internet connectivity was established. Even better, Daniel had personal contacts with the right people at the NIC who would grant him Internet connect status when he needed it. All he was missing was a device to allow him to run IP over some of the EUnet lines that were using X.25 - did this exist? I reached for my Cisco catalogue and showed him the model number he needed. Within a few months the key EUnet sites in Europe were equipped with Cisco routers, with the PTT's, regulators and other potential inhibitors none the wiser. The European IP network was born without ceremony.CERN Joins the Internet In 1988, the DC Group in DD Division (later renamed CS Group in CNDivision) finally agreed to take on the support of TCP/IP, and what hadbeen a shoestring operation, run out of SW Group with a few friendlycontacts here and there, became a properly staffed and organized activity.John Gamble became the new TCP/IP Coordinator, performing this task untilquite recently; he had just returned from extended leave at the Universityof Geneva where he had helped to set up one of the very first campus-wideTCP/IP networks in Europe. A year later, CERN opened its first externalconnections to the Internet after a "big bang" in January 1989to change all IP addresses to official ones. (Until then, CERN had used anillegal Class A address, Network 100, chosen by myself). CERN'sexternal Internet bandwidth flourished, with a growing system of links androuters managed by Olivier Martin and Jean-Michel Jouanigot. Concurrentlywith the growth of the new European IP network (later to be incorporatedas "RIPE" within the previously ISO-dominated organization"RARE"), many other players in Europe and elsewhere werechanging their attitudes. Prominent among these was IBM, who not onlybegan to offer a good quality mainframe TCP/IP LAN connection product oftheir own but also began to encourage migration of their proprietaryBITNET/EARN network towards IP instead of the much more restrictedRSCS-based service. They even began a subsidy programme called EASINET topay line charges for Internet connection of their European Supercomputersites of which CERN was one. In this way, the principal link (1.5Mbit/sec) between Europe and the USA was located at CERN and funded by IBMfor several years during the important formative period of the Internet.By 1990 CERN had become the largest Internet site in Europe and thisfact, as mentioned above, positively influenced the acceptance and spreadof Internet techniques both in Europe and elsewhere. Brian Carpenter,still the leader of CS Group, is today a member of the InternetArchitecture Board and a well known speaker at Internet gatherings.Experts like Olivier Martin and Jean-Michel Jouanigot are worldauthorities on Internet traffic and routing questions. CERN alsofacilitates the efforts of some staff members, including myself, who taketime to teach Internet technology in developing countries.The Web Materializes A key result of all these happenings was that by 1989 CERN's Internetfacility was ready to become the medium within which TimBerners-Lee would create the World Wide Web with a truly visionaryidea. In fact an entire culture had developed at CERN around"distributed computing", and Tim had himself contributed in thearea of Remote Procedure Call (RPC), thereby mastering several of thetools that he needed to synthesize the Web such as software portabilitytechniques and network and socket programming. But there were many otherdetails too, like how simple it had become to configure a state of the artworkstation for Internet use (in this case Tim's NeXT machine which heshowed me while he was setting it up in his office), and how once on theInternet it was possible to attract collaborators to contribute effortwhere that was lacking at CERN.Footnote The above is a short and personal record and I may have missed out somepeople or events that deserve mention. I would be happy to hear fromcolleagues whose memories can add to this history, which does not have tobe considered as my private property. Of course in the end I takeresponsibility for what appears under my name. The key words that cameto my mind while writing this history were: synergy, serendipity andcoincidence. Many of life's most propitious happenings are very deeply"a question of timing". It is my personal belief that the Webcould have emerged considerably earlier if CERN had been connected earlierto the Internet: the first Web proposal was written immediately after theopening of CERN's first external connection and it is known that Tim hadbeen working with hypertext ideas since 1980, influenced by Ted Nelson'swork on Xanadu among other things. But this remains in the realm ofspeculation. What is certain is that the Internet has provided a uniqueopportunity for some of us at CERN to take part in a series of eventswhich are helping to change the world for countless people, hopefully forthe better. |
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